Nickel Creek are young, talented, successful, and stylish. And good.
James Joyce’s classic short story “Eveline” gives us a character who is bound to her family, yet falls in love with a man who wants to take her across the ocean for a new life. Her mother’s deathbed wish is for Eveline to take care of her father, but once Eveline gets a taste of what true happiness can really be, she goes so far as traveling to the docks to board a ship with her man. Ultimately, however, she cannot break her promises or the bonds of family. Eveline is among the most tragic characters in literature, and hers is an allegory about the dangers and beauties of loving too much. In the end, Eveline is not able to follow her own happiness because she knows one kind of satisfaction will sacrifice another. And she cannot accept that.
Luckily, the three members of Nickel Creek — Chris Thile and Sara Watkins, both 24, and Sean Watkins, 28 — had no such quandaries. All three always knew what they wanted: to play music. All three were lucky to be born into families that were able to support that desire. And all three were encouraged by their parents to go and live, and enjoy.
After sixteen years together as a band, they’re doing just that. And they’re performing songs that sound more like poetry than money, especially the one about Joyce’s heartrending character. “Eveline” is one of fourteen tracks on their new album, Why Should The Fire Die?
Less than a month before the album’s August 9 release on Sugar Hill Records, Nickel Creek is performing at Nashville’s venerable Station Inn. The place is packed with a mostly young crowd. Outside, a line of less fortunate folks snakes down 12th Avenue South and around the building. A drunken man lets out a slurred demand to “Let those people in!” over and over, but his cries go in vain. The crowd inside is patiently waiting for the band to come on. A cashier constantly barks into a microphone at the counter: “Jacobson, your pizza is ready.” Five minutes later: “Jacobson, I’m eating your pizza.” Five minutes later she starts hollering for another customer.
Chris Thile is in the tiny men’s room, just trying to wash his hands while everyone talks to him. He is built like a plank of lumber, with a wild shock of hair that he seems to comb only with his fingers. He appears surprised that people have recognized him and as he squeezes between the door and the sink he winks back at everyone gathered there. “Don’t listen too close, all right?” he says. “These are all new songs, so we might mess up.”
They don’t. This is the first time the band has presented the entirety of the new album, and they’re playing the songs in sequence. Their performances are flawless, interrupted only by brief explanations of how the songs came into being, or bantering with the crowd. Chris makes fun of all the pre-show warnings (“No flash photography,” “No recording,” “Pick up your pizza now”) by announcing to the crowd that in addition to these rules, it’s also “not cool to hit.”
By the time the band has launched into its fourth song, a rousing instrumental, the crowd is fairly mesmerized. When the song is over, all three (plus bassist Mark Schatz, who played on the record as well) hoist votive cup shot glasses of whiskey in the air, and Sean announces: “That song is called ‘Scotch And Chocolate’, two of our favorite things.” And they all take a sip in jagged unison. (By the end of the show none of the glasses will be empty.)
As a prelude to another song, Chris looks over to his parents, seated near the stage, and says: “Dad, are you ready to get rocked?” Since his father used to be Nickel Creek’s bass player, he seems pretty agreeable to whatever they want to do, rocking or not. And then they launch into a face-melter by way of acoustics, playing so hard that one expects Thile’s fingers either to spontaneously combust or at least start spurting blood. Sean picks so furiously that he breaks a string on his guitar.
They have always been a confident bunch, but there is a new sense of assuredness about Nickel Creek now. No longer is Chris the main focus of everyone’s attention with his wild dancing and contagious glee. Now Sean — who looks like the quiet one but is actually quiet only in carefully formulating his thoughts or jokes — occasionally jerks back across the stage when the music hits a high frenzy, like a Pentecostal caught up in the spirit with his eyes closed and his body arching inward, cradling the guitar to him like something that might guide him straight to salvation. Sara saws on her bow with enough strength and determination to cut right through the strings and the wood, too. She uses her whole body to play the fiddle, firmly planting her feet widely apart as she sways back and forth to the beat of the music. When she sings, she looks at everyone in the audience with large, expressive eyes, pulling her voice from deep within.
Chris still comes off as the wild man who is so moved by music that he can’t contain himself, but he’s sharing the stage nowadays. He head-bangs, his fingers move in a blur across the mandolin strings, his legs suddenly kick up into the air. Before the night is over, several people in the audience are mimicking his unique movements. Not to mock him, but because they’ve subconsciously understood that he knows where every beat lies, he knows that music is something that can make you feel good enough to lose all inhibitions and just move.
All three sometimes become transfixed during their respective vocal deliveries. Sara seems completely to become the characters of the songs she sings, her eyes wet with compassion when she sings “Sabra Girl”, her face flushed with heartbreak when she performs Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is A Long Time”. Sean closes his eyes tightly on his solos, sometimes shaking his head along with a character’s frustration or satisfaction. Chris seems inhabited by the characters of the songs he fronts, his entire composure changing depending on whether the song’s point of view is from a cuckold or a cad.
The trio plays off of each other so well that at times they seem to be one entity, three people who are so attuned to one another that they predict the other’s next sentence or movement. And it is obvious that the bond between them is not just a matter of having grown up together. It’s music that joins them.
